A 1947 description of foo fighters looking like flying saucers. Numerous explanations are given in this 1947 article, ranging from static electricity to ball lightning to simply one’s overactive imagination.
AAF Pilots Reported ‘Foo Fighters’ in War Like ‘Flying Saucers’
Maybe the people who have been reporting “flying saucers” from all over the country just don’t know a “foo fighter” when they see one.
That’s what our fighter and bomber pilots called the air-borne discs or spheres they encountered over Nazi Germany in the winter of 1944-45 – “foo fighters,” if that’s any help.
Some of these weird objects, like those reported over America, emanated a reddish light, while others had the appearance of silver globes.
Fighter pilots returning to their base in France in early January of 1945 were convinced Hitler had come up with a new “secret weapon.” The Yanks dubbed them “foo fighters” or Kraut “fire balls.”
15 Followed Bomber
Some danced just off the wing tips, or played tag with the fighters in power dives. Others appeared in precise formation, and on another occasion a while bomber crew saw about 15 following at a distance, flashing on and off.
One “foo fighter” chased Lt. Meiers of Chicago 20 miles down the Rhine Valley at 300 miles an hour, an Associated Press war correspondent reported.
Intelligence believed at the time the balls might have been radar-controlled – sent up, perhaps, to foul ignition systems or baffle the Allies’ radar networks. The pilots soon learned they were harmless, to them personally at any rate.
It was speculated by scientists at home that the “foo fighters” might have been an electrical induction phenomena or one aspect of ball lightning, either of which might somewhat resemble St. Elmo’s fire.
Not Explained
The war-time mystery, like the current thriller, appears to have no explanation – unless, of course, the objects could have been imported for secret tests in this country.
Yet researchers of the Army, Navy and a Government observatory agreed today on one thing – they “don’t know what it’s all about.”
Informed that the crew of an airliner had reported seeing a formation of the strange “saucers” skimming through the sky last night, an Army Air Forces officer repeated, a bit wearily:
“We have no experimental aircraft of that nature in Idaho, nor anywhere else. We’re mystified.”
“I’d Like to See One First.”
The Navy also had no explanation, and the Naval Observatory here seemed certain from descriptions so far, including one supplied by a housewife in nearby Virginia, that the flying discs “do not seem to be astronomical phenomena.”
Official spokesmen had not much comment to make on “foo fighters” either.
“I’d like to see one first before I make a guess,” said Ivan R. Tannehill, chief of the Weather Bureau’s Division of Synoptic Reports and Forecasts, when asked for his explanation of the discs.
Mr. Tannehill said the reports “sound like those things you see on New Year’s Eve, except that this was on the Fourth of July.”
Compared to Monster Reports
Dr. Newbern Smith of the National Bureau of Standards put it in these words:
“It’s like those Loch Ness monster stories – once the report gets around that some one said they saw something, a lot of people think they see it too.”
He said he “wouldn’t think” the discs were a “natural phenomenon,” but that “any theory might do equally as well.” He suggested it may have been the “reflection of a distant plane.”
Source: Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 06 July 1947.
